The Smart Networks in isolated environments project is one of the first private 5G SA networks with advanced slicing pilots in Spain. The aim is to promote connectivity in environments with difficult accessibility in order to explore new applications based on real use cases.
Partners: Mobile World Capital Barcelona, Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC), Caelum Labs, Neutroon and Italtel.
Collaborators: MásMóvil and Aotec, with the support of the Generalitat de Catalunya.
Sector: Industry
Use cases: The Smart Networks in isolated environments project was created to create new demos to help develop innovative services in places of difficult accessibility thanks to the implementation of an autonomous private 5G network powered by Neutroon, as well as an Italtel WIFI-6 network to test and implement IoT solutions.
The project includes 3 demos:
- 5G SA private network: This network will provide advanced connectivity to the farmhouse located in a rural area where the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) runs Valldaura Labs. This will give IAAC a real testbed to test its different smart city innovations. The 100% hybrid, multi-vendor network, provided by Neutroon, allows end-to-end slicing with just a few clicks to ensure low latencies and guaranteed SLAs.
- Augmented Reality (AR): consists of the creation of an Augmented Reality experience within the IAAC Biocities project. Through the connectivity offered by the 5G SA private network and an Augmented Reality application, the user will be able to obtain a series of data on the origin of each of the pieces of 0 km wood used to build the cross-laminated timber panels that structure the Voxel, a cabin designed for the confinement of a person. The data that can be extracted from the wood are the species, the coordinates of the original tree, the volume and photos of the original tree.
- Additive manufacturing: involves the creation of a peer-to-peer communication tool based on the identity credential to create a private communication network between IAAC and the different 3D printing hubs located in Barcelona. The aim is to offer the user a 360º experience in which they can securely access any 3D printing centre, select the printer they need and print the file securely without compromising the privacy of their personal data. Once the piece is printed, the machine will send a message to the courier service to pick it up and then deliver it to the recipient. And this is possible thanks to Caelum’s solution that uses blockchain and Identity technology. Digital Soberana creates a secure ecosystem that enables real interoperability between organisations that are part of the process and provides users with secure access credentials to interact between devices.
Description of the technology:
Slicing is one of the features that will enable the full potential of 5G technology to be reached. This feature allows multiple logical networks to be run as virtually independent business operations on a single common physical infrastructure efficiently and without requiring high production resources.
Main solution or advance offered by technology:
This is one of the first times that the slicing method for 5G networks has been used for a proof of concept in Spain. 5G networks cover an extremely wide range of use cases ranging from IoT solutions, simple internet access or entertainment, to mission-critical uses such as autonomous vehicles or remote surgery. Each of these applications has very different latency, throughput or criticality requirements, making it difficult for them to share the same physical network.
Slicing enables the creation of multiple virtual networks on a common shared physical infrastructure that provides dedicated virtual networks to meet the specific needs of different applications, services, devices, customers or operators. With the concept of slicing, 5G consolidates and makes accessible a range of technologies previously available in isolation, such as software-defined networking (SDN) and virtualised network functions (VFN).
Status: Finished
